Someone Is Claiming to Have Found a Purple Heart in a Very Unlikely Place

If you're going to find anything when raking leaves, wrappers or old soda bottles are likely subjects. But a military decoration is probably the last thing you would expect.

A person in southwest Michigan clearing an area of fallen leaves claims to have uncovered a Purple Heart in what seemed to be a decomposing case.

A person claimed to find this Purple Heart while raking leaves. (Image source: Imgur via Reddit)

Posting the image on the social news site Reddit Tuesday night, the original poster said "not many people can say they've found a Purple Heart raking leaves." The medal's recipient has not been located, but the Redditor planned to look into it. Some suggested using sites like Purple Hearts Reunited, a lost and found website for such medals.

"This military award was given to someone who earned it in a way that couldn't have been easy. Hopefully someone is still looking for it, and maybe I can get a decent story out of all this," the original poster wrote.

Some other Redditors commenting on the post speculated that the medal might not actually have been lost but might have been buried with a body or with cremated remains.

There is no engraved name on the medal. According to a website documenting the history of Purple Hearts, the style of an engraved name could indicate the timeframe during which it was issued, but the military does not frequently engrave names anymore.

The words "For Military Merit" is engraved on the back of the medal, as it is for all Purple Hearts.

TheBlaze couldn't verify the claims of the original poster, so bear in mind there is always the potential that the image was staged.

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